Stalin Museum – Gori

The Stalin Museum is located in the center of Gori, his hometown, and was founded in 1937.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was born on 18^th December 1878 in Gori. His birthplace, where he spent the first 4 years of his life, is located outside the museum dedicated to him and in 1937 it was declared a monument to his memory.

The museum is divided into six exhibition rooms that trace the birth and development of the Soviet Union as well as Stalin’s life and exploits. 

It ranges from Bolshevik material from the October Revolution to his private life with numerous artifacts from when he was the secretary of the Communist Party in the period 1925-1939.

From 1941 to 1953 he was President of the Soviet Union.

Photographic blow-ups illustrate historical passages such as the Yalta peace agreement and the meeting of the allies in Tehran.

His studio from the period 1918-1922 is reconstructed with original furniture, objects and paintings. 

To balance an institution created on Stalin’s cult of personality, the Georgian government in 2010 had a new room set up in which crimes, purges, repression and deportations to Siberia during the Stalinist period are also illustrated.

Inside the museum there is also the funerary mask and commemorative plaques that were used during his funeral held in Moscow on 9^th March 1953.

After his death he was buried in Lenin’s Mausoleum next to the first Bolshevik leader. On the night of 31th October 1961, several KGB agents exhumed the body and gave it normal burial near the walls of the Kremlin.

Ten days later Stalingrad, the city on the Volga that he had pompously named after himself, changed its name to Volgograd. With his death on 5^th March 1953 and all these changes, the de-Stalinization of the country was completed. 

Outside the building is the armored train in which Stalin traveled. A wagon equipped with all comforts with bedroom, office, bathroom with bathtub and kitchen. Stalin never took a plane and traveled with this wagon to sign the end of the Second World War during the Yalta Conference.

In front of the museum has been installed the large statue of Stalin that until a few decades ago dominated the central square of Gori.